How To: Body Scan

This exercise is about generating awareness and appreciation of the impermanence of the body. This loosens our conviction to control our experience. 

Enter your meditation posture and initially connect with your breath as you would in a mindfulness of breathing exercise. It’s good to develop this concentration for a couple of minutes. After a while, actively open your awareness. Try to inhabit a floodlight of attention as opposed to a spotlight and bring your whole body to your attention. Think soft and open. 

There is actually no absolute way to go about the body scan and you can start from wherever you like, and move to whichever parts of your body feel natural. The standard practice is to start at your feet and end up at your head, or to do the reverse. So take your attention to the bottom of your feet or the tops of your head and simply notice what’s going on there. Just feel sensations. Don’t try to feel anything (don’t get all concentrated), just be aware of what you do feel in that part of your body. Recognise that the sensations you do feel (or even don’t) are constantly changing. In one sense, there is no permanence to your sensations. 

After a few minutes shift your awareness to the next part of your body. Either the tops of you feet and ankles or starting to move down your face. Take a few minutes at each location to just notice what’s going on there, and the impermanent, shifting sensations. Move slowly and naturally, there’s no need to rush. If there are parts of your body you are drawn to linger on, by all means do so. If there are some parts that it is uncomfortable to linger on then move on as naturally feels right for you. Whatever sensations you feel just notice them. Try not to think of anything as good or bad, it’s all just sensations, bare experience. 

It may be that particular thoughts or insights come to mind. Just notice them as well, try not to grasp or push things away. Remain balanced and poised in the mind. 

You may wish to contemplate the following areas of your body, but don’t be constrained by this. It can be good to practice getting very detailed in some areas and very broad at others. 

  • Bottom of feet

  • Tops of feet

  • Ankles

  • Shins and calf muscles

  • Knees

  • Thighs (front and back)

  • Hips and pelvis 

  • Groin

  • Stomach / belly

  • Chest

  • Lower back 

  • Upper back 

  • Spine

  • Internal organs

  • Shoulders

  • Upper arms 

  • Elbows

  • Forearms 

  • Wrists

  • Hands

  • Fingers and thumbs 

  • Neck / throat

  • Jaw

  • Areas of the face (lips, mouth, nose, eyes, ears, cheeks, temples, forehead, etc)

  • Back of head / skull 

  • Crown of head

  • Whole body

  • Chakra centres

Once you have completed a scan, see if you can zoom out and bring your whole body into your awareness. How does it feel? Sit here in whole body awareness for as long as you like. After some practice, you will begin to know what works well for you, and start to recognise your intuition on where to go next in your scan. You can also sometimes even get a sense of energy moving freely throughout the body. If you have time, do the scan for a second or third time. I recommend ending the practice with a sense of your whole body just sitting there in a very open awareness. 

As with other practices, try not to focus too hard or make your body feel one way or the other. This is about feeling and accepting what is. If you feel discomfort in one part of your body, do your best to acknowledge and accept it. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ are just labels and judgements, try to move past these. This will be difficult at first, but it can readily be done.

A good method for dealing with discomfort is to bring curiosity to the area. What is the pain like, specifically? Describe it. Is it sharp, dull, throbbing, electrifying? Is it confined to a very small area, or where are its edges? This sort of detached inquisitiveness can do wonders for quelling the pain because a lot of our pain is psychosomatic. 

Of course, don’t force yourself to push through unbearable pain, and move on from an area if you need to. Maybe next time get curious as to why it was unbearable that day. Remember, at all times, just notice. Your body has its own intuition and this is all about listening to it.

Thank yourself for your practice and if you want to, dedicate it to the end of suffering for all sentient beings. Giving our practice away in an act of compassion helps to develop it further.

Bay of Islands, New Zealand

hello@meditatewithfletch.co.nz

Site Map

Subscribe to the Newsletter

© 2026 Meditate with Fletch